


float

by hyewon



Category: LOONA (Korea Band)
Genre: ? - Freeform, ???? - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Gen, idk what this is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 09:56:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16083749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyewon/pseuds/hyewon
Summary: Jungeun sees a girl. No. She feels her.She feels her sink. She feels her float.





	float

**Author's Note:**

> i had this idea today and since i've been struggling to write lately, i thought i'd just write it down to see if it could help, but i have no idea what the fuck is going on. honestly, this is just some weird shit. i probably won't come back to it either, so don't expect much
> 
>  
> 
> but still, enjoy?

Jungeun watches as Heejin hits Hyunjin with one of the pillows scattered on top of the couch, with a lazy smile and a cup of hot chocolate Haseul’s mom made for her firmly held in her right hand. She doesn’t mind watching her friends enjoy themselves from afar, she’s a bit tired, and the only thing she feels like doing now, is relaxing, as she spends time with the few important people in her life. If they are happy in Jungeun’s vicinity, then Jungeun is happy too. She doesn’t need to be involved in the fun to feel the warmth and affection she has for these girls filling her heart, making her feel as light as a feather and, effectively, content.

A breeze hits her, and a chill runs through her body, so she moves the blanket covering her legs up, draping herself in its warmth more. But it’s not enough, Jungeun still feels cold. She stands up, leaving the blanket resting on the rocking chair and the cup on the coffee table, and approaches the large rectangular window at one side of the living room, determined to close it.

But, as she sees the hatch firmly clasped to the windowsill, and the window closed, Jungeun is confused. She definitely felt a cold breeze just a moment ago. Although, now that she thinks about it, a cold breeze? In September? She knows the weather tends to be crazy sometimes, but she’s sure it should probably be all out of cold winds for the time being.

Jungeun looks up, eyes going wide at the vision that meets her on the other side of the window. A much older girl, blonde, tall, and with her back towards the house, stands in the middle of Haseul’s large backyard. She’s quite a few yards away, so Jungeun shouldn’t be able make out her figure so well. But she does. The more she stares at the girl, the more Jungeun feels she’s seen her somewhere. She recognizes the outline of her body, even if she has no memory of her. Jungeun can’t even see her face, but, somehow, she already knows how she looks like. Or, at least, as the girl turns her head and stares at the house (at Jungeun), she looks exactly like Jungeun expected her to look.

The confused brunette chances a look behind her. Hyunjin got the upper hand on Heejin now, hitting her with her own pillow and the one she apparently stole from Heejin. Haseul is still baking cookies in the kitchen with her mom and Yeojin, and they all seem completely unaware of the stranger in the backyard.

Jungeun looks back at the girl.

Suddenly, she’s not looking at Haseul’s backyard anymore.

———————

_Jinsoul_ _stared at the little cottage on top of the snow-covered hill, for good measure, before turning back to the bare trees in front of her. She swore she had felt someone’s gaze on her, but then again, she had been feeling extremely paranoid lately, so she probably imagined it. She exhaled, her warm breath making little puffs of smoke in front of her. Her eyes nervously raked over the small patch of thin and barren trees they call a_ _forest_ _, before she closed them, inhaling the cold air once again, imagining_ _it was_ _courage feeling up her lungs._

_She took a step forward, and_ _entered the woods._

_Jinsoul_ _knew the way to the pathetic excuse for a lake by hard, having gone over there a thousand times since she was a kid, all against her mother’s wishes. She would always_ _blabber_ _about how strange that place was, and how she didn’t want_ _Jinsoul_ _to play there. But her mother was anything but a good mother, so_ _Jinsoul_ _had spent plenty of time playing around the area. And she did agree, the lake was strange._

_But_ _Jinsoul_ _still felt drawn to it. Almost like a moth drawn to the light._

_She pushes branches aside and avoids a few others, her boots sinking into the deep snow as she goes further into the woods. She walks and walks, until she reaches the line where the trees end, and comes face to face with the lake._

_The puddle of water was a perfectly_ _symmetrical_ _circle, barely larger than a small backyard._ _Jinsoul_ _had no idea how deep it was, she had never bothered swimming in to check, besides throwing a few peddles when she was little, and then larger and larger rocks and things as she_ _grew up_ _. They had all sunken with loud_ **_plops_ ** _, and not even the larger, longer objects she had thrown into it had peaked out of the water._

_Today,_ _Jinsoul_ _decided, staring down at the frozen body of water, she was going to change that._

_In an impulse, she took her gloves, scarf, and hat off, her jacket following after them to the snowy ground. She was left clad in her boots, jeans, and black turtle neck, the cold already hugging her face and insufficiently covered limbs. Her teeth started to chatter, and her breaths became more rapid, short, and erratic._

_She took one step forward, carefully stepping on the fragile ice. When the ice didn’t even crack,_ _Jinsoul_ _took another. And another. And another. Until she was standing right in the middle of the lake, with no more steps to take._

_Jinsoul_ _looked down at the_ _see-through_ _surface, and into the dark water below it. There wasn’t a_ _single_ _thing she could make out in it, not even a bubble of air. There were no plants, no fish, not even the stuff she had thrown_ _throughout_ _the years._ _Jinsoul_ _only saw her reflection on the ice, contrasted by the dark gray water and spots of white snow._

_Looking up,_ _Jinsoul_ _settled her eyes on the moon. It wasn’t strange to still get glimpses of the moon during the day at this time of the year, especially when it was this early in the morning._

**_Crack._ **

_Odd._ _Jinsoul_ _had never really noticed how, from earth, the moon looked quite alike to the surface of a frozen body of water. It was like_ _it_ _mirrored the lake she was currently standing on._

**_Crack. Crack. Crack._ **

_Finally hearing the subtle cracking,_ _Jinsoul_ _looks down, finding her reflection shattered by thin white lines._

**_Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack. Crack._ **

_The moon didn’t look like ice as much anymore._

_The ice cracked,_ _Jinsoul’s_ _full body weight being too much to support in one spot, and_ _Jinsoul_ _fell into the freezing water._

_The cold that suddenly dug into_ _Jinsoul’s_ _skin_ _paralyzed_ _her. She wanted to scream, she wanted to swim and come out for air, she wanted to escape the unimaginable pain the cold caused her, but she couldn’t. She could only sink, deeper and deeper, the moon being the only thing visible, besides chunks of ice, through the ripples in the water and the hole she had made._

_Bubbles escaped her mouth and air drained from her lungs out of her control, making her sink faster and faster._ _Jinsoul_ _wondered if it was even worth it trying to fight her own shut down body, her consciousness trapped in it, trying to convince her she should be freaking out._

_But_ _Jinsoul_ _didn’t. In fact, after the initial shock and contact with the water, she didn’t feel the cold as much. Her body was still incredibly in pain, but at least she wasn’t cold anymore. She felt_ _mysteriously_ _warm, a feeling of fondness and comfort engulfing her, sheltering her from the darkness_ _around_ _her, pulling her down. She felt oddly relaxed, at peace._

_The air in her lungs was quickly being replaced by water, burning her throat and adding pressure to her chest, and_ _Jinsoul_ _could find herself smiling._

_She didn’t feel like she was sinking anymore._

_It was more like... floating._

_Jinsoul_ _closed her eyes, a last sigh leaving her in the form of a bubble._

_——————_

Jungeun tumbles backwards, hitting the table behind her, and, consequently, knocking off the flower base on it. It falls to the ground with a loud crash, pieces of porcelain flying all over the place, the water quickly spreading through the floor, as the lone flower bounced from the impact, before staying still.

But it all sounds muffled to Jungeun. She finds that she can’t breathe, and she falls to her knees, coughing, and trying to get all the water insider her lungs out.

“Jungeun?!” someone yells from behind her, or at least she thinks that’s what they yell. Everything suddenly sounds like it’s far away, like Jungeun is underwater. A strong hand pats her on the back, making it easier for her to cough all the water out. 

Jungeun pants heavily, trying to even her breathing.

“Are you okay, Jungeun?” Hyunjin asks beside her, Jungeun's hearing finally coming back to normal.

Without missing a beat, Jungeun replies, “We have to help her.”

From the corner of their eyes, Jungeun sees Heejin and Hyunjin exchanging a worried look.

“Who? Haseul? I’m pretty sure her mom is-”

“No,” Jungeun cuts Heejin off, “The girl in the lake. She’s drowning.”

“The girl in the what? Jungeun, what are you talking about?”

Jungeun frowns, frustated that her friends don’t seem to grasp the gravity of the situation.

“The girl standing on the ice! She-” her sentence dies in her mouth, as she looks up at the window, and instead of seeing the snowy landscape of the lake, she finds Haseul’s backyard, grass neatly cut and birds chirping with the beginning of spring.

 

Jungeun looks back down at the floor, all the water she just coughed out a minute ago nowhere in sight.

“She was there,” Jungeun whispers in disbelief, “She was right there. I saw her.”

Hyunjin and Heejin exchange another glance, this one more confused than worried. Jungeun turns to look at them desperately.

“I’m not making this up, I swear,” but her friends are no longer listening to her. Instead, they are looking wide-eyed at Jungeun’s face.

“Jungeun,” Heejin whispers softly, “There’s... something. In your eye.”

Jungeun frowns, and stands up, Hyunjin and Heejin hot on her trail. Rounding the couch, she approaches the mirror hanging by the opposite wall of the fireplace, next to the one with the window. Her frown disappears and her eyes go as wide as her friends’ when she locks gazes with her own reflection.

There, right in the outer edge of the iris in her left eye, is a red circle, shining as bright as a neon sign.

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me on twitter by @crystalloona now


End file.
